Friday, August 21, 2009

The Jasper Flashback: A (Potential) Rant

I am praying for this not to be true. Please, for the love of Sam Houston, do not let this be what they are using as the backdrop for his conversion to vampire-hottie-dom.

I really don't want to sound like a purist or anything like that, but the whole scene took place about a mile south of H-town on the way to Galveston. And, you know what? I was pretty jazzed about that (no pun intended). Why? 'Cuz I was born and raised in this god-forsaken part of Texas! I could picture in my head EXACTLY what the whole scene looked like because I freakin' live here!

For all you people who have never visited the fourth largest city in the US (yeah, betcha didn't know that, eh? Houston gets NO respect.) or even had to change planes here (and if you've flown Continental, you probably have), WE DON'T HAVE MOUNTAINS! We are F-L-A-T. Like the chests of all those 12-year-old fangirls at Hot Topic. We have trees, bayous (creeks and rivers... depends on how much it has rained) and golf courses. We're even pretty darn green, unlike the desert-like landscape of the above picture. It rains, on average, 46" a year here, granted half of that is often all at one time (see Hurricane Ike for further reference).

See? Flat!

SIDE: There was a VERY short-lived TV show in the eighties set in Houston. I can't even remember the name of it. But the gist of it was that these cowboys were out in the canyons/mountains herding "dogies" when they were struck by lightning. The lightning transported these cowboys into the future. I remember watching the opening scene of the show (The family was gathered 'round the tv set. We were all excited that someone would actually set a tv show here.) when they stumble to the edge of the canyon and look down to see a modern downtown Houston. We all burst out laughing! It was a huge joke in town. People would laugh about their weekend plans, saying they were going to head out to the mountains to get in some skiing.

Speaking of Ike, it hit Galveston. You know, the place where Major Whitlock was evacuating people from the island? Because of the Battle of Galveston? Seems historically incorrect to have him in deep West Texas (where the mountains and desert are).

I know, they'll just re-write some lame reason for him to be out on horseback, riding around in the desert... where nobody lives. Still. To this day. Why? Sure, it's beautiful out there, but nothing is out there, but hikers and UFOs. Seriously! I've driven through it! You can GoogleEarth it. And to be fair, I did have to quickly dodge a rolling tumbleweed while driving 83 mph on I-10. That was unreal. I thought that kind of thing only happened in cartoons.

I've never been to Canada, or the Pacific Northwest for that matter, but there HAS to be somewhere up there (or at the very least a clever camera angle) some way to do this scene without the stereotypical "I'm in Texas, so there must be desert and canyons and stuuuuff. Hey, Joe! See if you can get some tumbleweeds!" Summit uses computers to make the werewolves... CGI some accurate landscape or something.

Don't even get me started on the potential accents they might be planning to use (too late), with one notable and majorly important exception: Jackson Rathbone. I have to give Catherine Hardwick some major credit here. Thank you for casting the Texan vampire with someone who grew up here! This is the main reason neither I nor anyone else I know who grew up in the Texas/Louisiana area can stand to watch True Blood. I tried. Really, I did! I even tried to convince myself that "it's so bad, it's good" (and I'm a big fan of that genre: see Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and The Rocky Horror Picture Show). But the atrocious fake accents just put me off my dinner (that and the corny cha-ching noise you hear when their vampire fangs come out). It's like hearing fingernails on a chalkboard, or maybe a metal fork scraping against a metal mixing bowl. Actually, for you peeps from NJ, it's like hearing people pretend they are from the Garden State... by way of Long Island. SIDE: Had a roommate from Long Island once, along with a roomie from "Basston" and another roomie from New Orleans. We posted a piece of paper on our living room wall where we would write our favorite "localisms" like: "Ba: a place you go to drink" or "Ka: what you drive to get to the Ba."

I FEEL YOUR PAIN !!! I was thinking the same thing! I live about 30 minutes east of Houston. (Baytown/Mont Belvieu...know it??) We go to Galveston all the time, so I was able to picture this portion of the story so well. I so hope that they use another location, but if not...I won't really be surprised...